AUGUST 2019 - AudioFile
This is a listen for anyone who's married, divorced, dating, and/or cares about women. It’s an outstanding audiobook delivered by an exceptional narrator, Allyson Ryan. By now, many have heard the buzz about this novel. Believe the hype. It's ostensibly about a recently divorced New York City doctor, but really it’s about the challenges women face in relationships—in working, in parenting, and in partnering during a time when women are told they can (and should) have it all while also being expected to be all things to all people. Ryan's performance is spot-on throughout. She captures the essence of each character and never misses a beat in expressing the author's insights into life as a woman in the 21st century. J.P.S. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
The New York Times Book Review - Tom Rachman
In her witty and well-observed debut, Fleishman Is in Trouble, Taffy Brodesser-Akner updates the miserable-matrimony novel, dropping it squarely in our times…Brodesser-Akner has written a potent, upsetting and satisfying novel, illustrating how the marital pledgebuild our life togetheroverlooks a key fact: There are two lives. And time isn't a sharer.
Publishers Weekly
04/01/2019
Brodesser-Akner’s sharp and tender-hearted debut centers on hapless 41-year-old New York hepatologist Toby Fleishman, recently separated from his driven wife, Rachel, and alternately surprised and semidisgusted to find his dating apps “crawling with women who wanted him,” who prove it by sending him all manner of lewd pictures. After an increasingly rocky 14-year marriage, Toby has asked Rachel, who owns a talent agency and makes a lot more money than he does, for a divorce, because she is always angry and pays little attention to their two preteen kids. But then, as Toby is juggling new girlfriends, dying patients, and unhappy children, Rachel disappears, leaving Toby to cope with logistics more complicated than he anticipated. The novel is narrated by Toby’s old college friend Libby (a device that’s occasionally awkward), a former magazine journalist now bored with life as a housewife in New Jersey. Though both she and the novel are largely entrenched on Toby’s side, Libby does eventually provide a welcome glimpse into Rachel’s point of view. While novels about Manhattan marriages and divorces are hardly a scarce commodity, the characters in this one are complex and well-drawn, and the author’s incisive sense of humor and keen observations of Upper West Side life sustain the momentum. This is a sardonically cheerful novel that readers will adore. (June)
From the Publisher
This glorious debut has the humor of Maria Semple, the heart of Meg Wolitzer, the lustiness of Philip Roth, and a voice that is pure. It’s wild and wonderful and goes in so many directions, each with profundity—my favorite thing that novels can do. How does one's favorite journalist become one's new favorite novelist? With this book.”—Emma Straub
“When his ex drops the kids off and doesn’t come back, a father of two revisits the choices that led to this moment. He searches for answers, hilariously and heartbreakingly avoiding the darkest questions. Brodesser-Akner’s debut is a referendum on marriage, friendship, and how we live (and love) right now.”—People
“Whip-smart, gleefully scatological . . . [Brodesser-Akner] aims a perfect gimlet eye at the city’s relentless self-regard. . . . But her best trick may be the novel’s narrator: An elusive presence identified at first only as an old friend of Toby’s from their study-abroad days, she turns out to be both the book’s Trojan horse and—in a brilliant third-act pivot—its greatest gift, transforming a fizzy comedy of manners into something genuinely, unexpectedly profound.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Many novelists have written excellent fictional indictments of interpersonal and systemic sexism. Not since Teju Cole’s Open City—a very different book in all other respects—has a novelist put the reader on the wrong side the way Brodesser-Akner does. To do so, she uses a lot of intelligence, a lot of anger, a great sense of humor and a whole new variation on the magic we know from her magazine work. The result is a maddening, unsettling masterpiece, and, yes, you will be moved and inexplicably grateful at the end.”—NPR
“In her witty and well-observed debut, Taffy Brodesser-Akner updates the miserable-matrimony novel, dropping it squarely in our times. . . . Brodesser-Akner has written a potent, upsetting and satisfying novel, illustrating how the marital pledge—build our life together—overlooks a key fact: There are two lives.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Electric . . . Brodesser-Akner’s first foray into fiction—set in Manhattan, the Hamptons, and Israel—is funny, stylish, and insightful, whether describing men’s challenged communication skills or the knife juggler’s agility required to maintain a modern marriage.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
“Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s sharp debut novel is packed with humor and heart. In it, the titular trouble begins when Toby Fleishman realizes that Rachel—his wife of 15 years, from whom he’s now separated—is missing. Where has she gone, and why? This book will have you racing through the pages to find the answers.”—Southern Living
“Everything you could wish for in a satisfying summer read . . . Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s page-turner doubles as a satirical take on modern relationships.”—Women’s Health
AUGUST 2019 - AudioFile
This is a listen for anyone who's married, divorced, dating, and/or cares about women. It’s an outstanding audiobook delivered by an exceptional narrator, Allyson Ryan. By now, many have heard the buzz about this novel. Believe the hype. It's ostensibly about a recently divorced New York City doctor, but really it’s about the challenges women face in relationships—in working, in parenting, and in partnering during a time when women are told they can (and should) have it all while also being expected to be all things to all people. Ryan's performance is spot-on throughout. She captures the essence of each character and never misses a beat in expressing the author's insights into life as a woman in the 21st century. J.P.S. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2019-02-28
It's not like Fleishman's estranged wife, a high-powered talent agent, was ever a very involved mother. But now she's dropped off the kids—while he was asleep—and disappeared.
New York Times Magazine staff writer Brodesser-Akner's debut novel tracks Manhattan hepatologist Toby Fleishman through a painful divorce whose sting is mitigated somewhat by the wonders of his dating app. "Toby changed his search parameters to thirty-eight to forty-one, then forty to fifty, what the hell, and it was there that he found his gold mine: endlessly horny, sexually curious women who knew their value, who were feeling out something new, and whose faces didn't force him to have existential questions about youth and responsibility." About 30 pages in, we learn that the narrator is an old friend named Elizabeth "Libby" Slater, whom he met when both were college students on a year abroad in Israel. After the separation, his therapist advised Toby to reconnect with old friends; not having heard from him in years, Libby is at first nonplussed when he calls. A magazine journalist with a stalled career, she lives out in New Jersey, where she's no happier with motherhood than Toby's ex—she describes another male friend's future marriage as "He [would] find someone young and take her life away by finally having children." Toby Fleishman is a man plagued by his height (or at least he is in Libby's account; this narrative strategy raises questions), and he has never recovered from being chubby as a child; he's on a permanent no-carb, no-fat, no-sugar diet which qualifies as an eating disorder. He's a devoted father, but he's also a doctor who's angling for promotion and a man who's trying to take advantage of the unbridled lust of middle-aged women, so his wife's mysterious disappearance is infuriating. And a little scary. Toby is a wonderful character; Libby's narrative voice is funny, smart, and a little bitter as she tells his story, and some of hers as well. You get the feeling she wants to write a novel like (the fictional) Decoupling, an outrageous, bestselling, canonical account of divorce written by one of the stars at her old magazine. Perhaps she has.
Firing on all circuits, from psychological insight to cultural acuity to narrative strategy to very smart humor. Quite a debut!